Brave CEO States Few Users are Using Crypto on the Browser

Brave, a blockchain-based online browser platform boasting 13 million monthly users, has hit an unexpected snag in its operation. Very few of the platform’s customers appear to be leveraging the cryptocurrency aspect of the platform at all.

Eich: Few Users Opt For Full Crypto Experience

Through a live twitter stream done on the 5th of May, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the heavyweight Binance exchange, spoke with Brendan Eich, the CEO and co-founder of the Brave browser.

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1257535203016241154

Here, Eich stated that the crypto-enabled web browsing platform has managed to reach 13.8 million monthly active users at the end of April. CZ was impressed, noting that it could probably be the most active user base in crypto as a whole.

However, not everything’s sunshine and rainbows, according to Eich. The Brave CEO admitted that a majority of its users don’t actually use the built-in cryptocurrency features. To be exact, Eich stated that the number of users that have opted to join the Brave Rewards crypto-based system, and had their Bitcoin wallets active for the past 30 days, stands at about 1.7 million. This totals to a measly 12.32% of the platform’s total users who decided to opt into crypto.

How Advertisers Spend Money

Eich went into detail, explaining that a user’s web activity is typically tracked when they start browsing the internet. This data, in turn, can be leveraged to target advertisements to that individual in question.

Eich took the time to explain the system from an advertiser’s point of view. He stated that the people in advertising would spend a lot of money to try and get you as a user to buy their various goods. Thus, they throw money into the digital ad systems, which in turn may give you an ad that catches your eye.

Otherwise, it tracks your movements on the internet, deciding what ad to show you from there. However, Eich hammered the point that you, as a consumer, don’t get any of the money companies to spend on trying to target you with specific advertisements. This is also true for the information it gets from you in tracking your internet movement.

Enabling Consumers To Sell Data

The Brave Browser, Eich explained, blocks these traditional mediums of advertising and tracking. Instead, it allows for a user to choose whether or not to participate in a “clean” ad and donation model, with the default choice being set to private. The Basic Attention Token, or BAT, of the browser was developed to be a unit to measure the attention of a user. This can be used in order to support various content creators, as well as award users that view ads.